As school resumes for the 2009-10 year, Haralson County school officials will be under increased pressure to improve students’ scores as they strive to remove Haralson County Middle School and Buchanan Elementary School from the Department of Education’s list of schools designated as “Needs Improvement.”

According to the U. S. Department of Education, “schools that receive federal Title I funds [...] that have not made state-defined adequate yearly progress (AYP) for two consecutive school years must be identified as needing school improvement.”

As a result, the Haralson County School System will have to develop a two-year plan to improve the school’s status.

Pepper Moon, Haralson County School’s executive director of Continuous School Improvement, says the Haralson County Board of Education has already begun taking steps to meet this goal.

“We are looking at the data and looking at the areas where students didn’t meet standards and working on those areas,” she said.

HCMS and BES did not make AYP this year because, for the second year in a row, students in the “Students with Disabilities” category failed to meet AYP criteria for academic performance. As a result, BES must offer either School Choice or Supplemental Education Services to students, and HCMS must offer both. However, there is no other middle school in the county to which students can transfer. Therefor, students of HCMS will only have the option to take advantage of the supplemental services.

“The middle school will be offering Supplemental Education Services that have been approved by the [Georgia] Department of Education,” Moon said. “Parents will be provided with a list of services that will be available, and the school will pay for those services up to a certain amount.”

Services that may be offered to students include tutors and other instructive vendors, such as the Sylvan Learning Center, who contract with the state department of education to provide these supplemental services.

Under the School Choice provision, students can take advantage of the opportunity to transfer to another school within the school system’s district if their current school is listed as “Needs Improvement.” However, HCMS students will not be able to transfer to schools outside the Haralson County School System despite the fact there is no other middle school in the district because no other school system has signed a contract with Haralson County, which they must do to allow such a transaction. While middle schoolers will not have the option to switch schools, students at BES will be able to transfer to West Haralson Elementary School if their parents or guardians wish them to do so.

Moon said despite the fact that BES students have to be allowed to transfer if they wish, “if space is limited, the first priority will go to the lowest achieving and lowest income students.”

The board will also be responsible for transporting those students who wish to transfer to WHES from their homes to the school. Parents who do not wish to transfer their students from BES to WHES can also take advantage of the Supplemental Education Services, which will be offered to BES students as well as HCMS students.

Yet, the school system’s efforts will not end there. Moon says all schools will continue their current academic after-school programs, which are held after school at every school in the county for one and a half to two hours.

“We offer academic after-school programs to every student in grades K through 12.”

BES and HCMS were not the only two schools who failed to make AYP for two years in a row. Haralson County High School also failed for the second year; however, the school failed in a different area both years.

“The High School hit their graduation rate requirement this year,” Moon said, “but not their Georgia High School Graduation Test requirement.”

Therefore, the school will not be placed on the “Needs Improvement” list.

According to the DOE, “schools that remain in improvement for [more than three years] are subject to corrective action and restructuring, including a takeover or complete reorganization of the school.”

However, Moon says the board and its administrators are determined not to let that happen.

“We are working hard to keep schools off the ‘Needs Improvement’ list and get the ones on it off,” she said. “We want the school system to do well. We have a good school system, and our kids deserve it. We are always striving for improvement.”

It takes at least two years to get off the “Needs Improvement” list, as a school must meet AYP for two years in a row to be removed from the list.